Friday, October 31, 2014

On a lighter note, here is a 9/11 was an inside job Monster Mash parody song produced for the "Stew's Conspiracy Funhouse" podcast, as well as an interactive zombie film, both made by blog contributor Stewart Bradley. The film features yours truly as one of the undead. I'm the one who smacks his head off a metal car wash dryer in the bloopers at the end.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Robert MacLean isn’t the only reason the Project On Government Oversight is closely watching the Supreme Court this term. (MacLean’s oral argument
is on Tuesday, November 4.) Another case on the Court’s calendar has
major implications for federal whistleblowers and the ability of the
government to recover defrauded funds—a nearly nine-year-old False
Claims Act (FCA) lawsuit accusing Halliburton and KBR of defrauding the government and endangering the health of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Benjamin Carter,
who worked for KBR (then a subsidiary of Halliburton) in Iraq in 2005,
claims the company falsely billed the government by instructing
employees to submit timesheets showing they worked 12-hour days on water
testing and purification services when no such work had been done. As a
result, he contends, troops and other personnel were exposed to
contaminated potable and non-potable water.

Carter made news when he testified before Congress
about his experiences in Iraq. “Our men and women overseas deserve the
best our taxpayer dollars can buy, and it saddens me to report that
we’re falling short on something as simple and essential as providing
them with clean, safe water,” he told the Senate Democratic Policy
Committee at a January 2006 hearing.

Carter’s lawsuit, originally filed in 2006, kept getting dismissed
for procedural reasons. Finally, in March 2013, a federal appeals court
ruled the case could go forward, setting up the Supreme Court showdown. The specific issues
the Supreme Court will decide are: Whether Carter filed his lawsuit
within the legally mandated time limit, and whether his lawsuit is
barred because another lawsuit making similar allegations had been filed
earlier.

The latter issue involves the FCA’s first-to-file rule,
which bars lawsuits that raise the same facts as a previously filed
lawsuit. The rule is intended to encourage whistleblowers to promptly
alert the government of wrongdoing and to discourage the filing of
meritless, copycat lawsuits. A few weeks before Carter filed his
lawsuit, another former KBR employee who worked in Iraq, Todd Thorpe,
filed a lawsuit alleging employees at other bases performing different
services were similarly instructed to bill the government for 12-hour
days regardless of the actual number of hours they worked. Thorpe’s
lawsuit was dismissed in 2010 before the court could rule on the merits.
Nonetheless, KBR and Halliburton would like the Court to broadly
interpret the first-to-file rule so that Thorpe’s lawsuit bars later
actions filed by Carter, Peter Duprey, and others alleging timecard fraud by KBR or Halliburton.

The Carter, Thorpe, and Duprey cases involve the Army’s Logistics
Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III support services contract, about
which POGO has written extensively
over the years. The far-reaching LOGCAP III contract has been mired in
controversy ever since it was awarded to KBR in December 2001. At the
time, it was pointed out that KBR/Halliburton’s former chairman and CEO was Vice President Dick Cheney. Since then, there have been repeated allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse on the LOGCAP III, on which the government has spent $38 billion.

Not under consideration by the Supreme Court, but an issue worthy of
discussion, is government intervention in FCA lawsuits. The government
declined to intervene in the Carter, Thorpe, and Duprey lawsuits.
Government intervention in FCA cases means a smaller monetary recovery
for the plaintiff whistleblower, but it also greatly increases the
government’s ability to hold contractors accountable.

Furthermore, the law
states that lawsuits must remain under seal (not publicly disclosed)
“for at least 60 days” while the government decides whether to
intervene, but in practice it usually takes longer—much longer
in some cases. For Thorpe and Duprey, it was more than four years after
they filed their lawsuits when the government notified them it would not
intervene. Incredibly, the government informed Duprey
that, after all that time, it had not completed its investigation into
his claims and thus was “not able to make a fully informed decision
regarding intervention.”
While sealing and delays are often necessary, at a certain point
these measures become an unnecessary restriction on the public’s right
to know about potential health or safety threats—like the water
contamination problem Carter alleges in his lawsuit. POGO also worries
about the effect these measures have on the continued viability of the
False Claims Act, which is already under unrelenting attack from the business community. As of January 2011,
more than 1,300 False Claims Act lawsuits were stuck in legal limbo
awaiting the government’s intervention decision. (The Justice Department
has not yet responded to POGO’s request for more recent False Claims
Act/qui tam lawsuit statistics.)

Dave AdamAll
collected samples will be thrown out because of Chain of custody
protocol not being followed or verifiable. Anyone can make so-called WTC
dust and put whatever iron spheres they want in it. That ship has
sailed, no court in this country will simply take a person's word that
samples are genuine and unaltered.

The
paper's findings are based primarily on the analysis of particles
derived from four separate samples of dust generated by the destruction
of the Twin Towers, samples whose provenance the paper describes in
detail. Each of the samples was collected by a different individual who
has described the time, place, and methods of collecting and storing
their sample. Each individual collected dust that had settled directly
after the fall of one of the Twin Towers, with the one exception,
Janette MacKinlay, who collected dust when allowed to re-enter her
apartment a week after it was carpeted with shovel-fulls of dust and
debris from the South Tower.

John,
the chain of custody issue is cooked up by the debunkers. The handling
of the samples was done no differently then typical scientific studies,
and much research out there on the dust uses the same methods and no
police were involved. The USGS did not have police escorts, the UC Davis
researchers did not get dust from the police, etc. That is just not
done in scientific studies, which is what this is. In fact, most studies
never say anything about how the dust was obtained, only where it was
found.

No one who can replicate the tests has questioned the methodology. Debunkers have made all kinds of claims that are false.

I
agree that there should be independent verification, and hopefully
there will be. I encourage you to contact the authors and ask them about
it, express your concerns so they can respond. I will send you their
emails if you like.

Quote from Mark Basile from a Video Posted at Debunking the Debunkers:

"I
have independently seen thermitic activity within two independent
samples of World Trade Center Dust. [...] I would really like to stress
that we need a lot more people involved in this work than just the few
of us that are doing it right now.

My work with this has brought
me to feel that this material is too big of an unanswered question and
it really brings us to demand a new investigation. This is hard evidence
that can not be refuted.
Anyone can replicate the work that’s been done and confirm that this material is there.

"The
three features of the red-gray chips highlighted here -- physical
structure, chemical composition, and thermal behavior -- clearly
establish that they are aluminothermic nano-composite pyrotechnics:
advanced manufactured materials that may only have been invented as
recently as the mid-1990s. Any one of these three features taken alone
shows that the chips contain an energetic material of some sort having
no legitimate place in an office building. Any two of these features
establishes that the material is an advanced pyrotechnic. That, combined
with the material's abundance -- constituting perhaps 0.05 percent of
the mass of the dust and therefore likely tens of tons within the
buildings -- is clearly incompatible with prosaic sources, and fully
consistent with the observations that the Towers were subjected to
controlled demolitions."

Again: "the material's abundance --
constituting perhaps 0.05 percent of the mass of the dust and therefore
likely tens of tons within the buildings"...

On
top of everything else here and in the below video where Steven Jones
discusses chain of custody, tons of material in the dust guarantees it
wasn't seeded or from contamination. The only debate is what it is. Judging from the ignition tests that Millette won't run, it looks not to be paint. IMO a grand jury would get to see that type of evidence if we
ever get to that point and that is why the Basile study is so
important. Here is an action alert page I put together on trying to get a
grand jury convened.

The
fact that skeptical scientists have attempted to independently
replicate and rebut the findings of Harrit et al means the hypothesis
has progressed to the next stage of the scientific process - meaning any
criticisms of its initial peer-review are now null and void. For years,
debunkers have basically said, "we're going to dismiss this paper
because we don't believe it was properly peer-reviewed". But now, this
position has been undermined. As I pointed out before, the JREFers'
support of Dr Millette's study was an acknowledgement of the
nanothermite hypothesis' scientific legitimacy. They can no longer argue
on the basis of editorial controversy that the claims of Harrit et al
should not be taken seriously, because they DID take them seriously!...

"Chain of Custody!"..

By questioning the chain of custody you are effectively accusing the
scientists and the citizens of conspiring to fake evidence by
manufacturing high-tech energetic nanocomposites that only a handful of
labs in the world can even make and adding them to samples! That sounds
like a crazy conspiracy theory to me! And yet you find the idea of the
government tampering with evidence ridiculous! Someone get Pat a tin
foil hat!

Now that red/gray chips, or at least particles
purporting to be them, have been found in professionally collected
samples independent of Steven Jones', debunkers can now be assured that
these red/gray chips, whatever they are, did not enter Jones' samples
via accidental contamination, and were not intentionally added by 9/11
truth activists. So criticisms regarding the collection and chain of
custody of Jones' samples are now null and void.

Physicist Steven Jones - one of the scientists who found thermite
in the World Trade Center dust discusses in depth his process of discovery
using the scientific method. Chain of custody of the WTC dust and nanothermite are discussed in depth.

As a wise person put it, the losses are permanent, the victories are only temporary. Each new shock comes before we have recovered from the last one. JFK was assassinated 45 years ago and there is still no closure.

The American people don't want to know the truth and they will not rise up. They are comfortable with genocide. Ask yourself how many dedicated peace activists you know personally who voted for continuing war crimes under the command of Barack Obama.

Many of the Democratic gatekeeper sites urged people to vote for Obama by saying that first we had to elect him and then we could hold his feet to the fire. But they already knew from his FISA vote, his vote to fund the wars, and his bailout vote, that he has asbestos shoes and doesn't care what people say or think. Now they are purging dissidents and saying that nobody should criticize Obama, that we have to accept the "centrism" of Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi, two Democrats who are far to the political right of Bush and Cheney. They never intended to press Obama for peace, they wanted more genocide.

COINTELPRO has had decades to eliminate potential leaders and replace them with government agents and operatives. I don't care how Libertarian, liberal, progressive, or leftist they claim to be, any website that costs more than a thousand dollars a month to run, is part of the government. Activists simply don't have that kind of money. They talk about revolution and withdrawing our consent, but when it comes to election time they all sing the same song--get out and vote and support the system. It doesn't matter who you vote for, as long as the major parties do the nominating and control the electoral system, the military-industrial complex always wins.

It doesn't matter if you voted for Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, Barack Obama, or Mickey Mouse, or if you ignored the Presidential race and voted only for local offices and ballot propositions. If you voted, you delegated your power and granted your mandate to a government engaged in wars of aggression and crimes against humanity. You agreed to it. You accepted it. You showed your support for it. You stood up to be counted as another fascist. You may have salved your conscience by promising yourself that you'd go out in the streets and protest the government you'd just voted for, but that's a sure way to lose. Once you've legitimized a government, you've criminalized anyone who protests it, even yourself. Why would you do that? You voted to consent to allow the government to fund and pull off the next 9/11. Why would you do that? You voted against freedom and against truth -- how can you do that and still call yourself a truther?

Every election we're told that this is the most important election. Every election there are emotional issues on the ballot like guns, gays, God, and abortion, deliberately placed on the ballot to get emotional morons to vote for genocide, corporate bailouts, and the NAU. Because whoever or whatever you vote for or against, by voting you are legitimizing fascism and giving it your authority.

But you knew all that, right? You knew it and you voted anyway. Because you really don't care. You don't care about peace, about truth, about anything but yourself, your vote, and your self-righteous hypocrisy. So what if a few million more innocent people die. So what if the world economy is destroyed. So what if we all end up in concentration camps. YOU voted, and that's all that matters to you, right? The consequences aren't your problem because in voting, you delegated all responsibility to somebody else. Anybody else. Whoever the machines said won. That's fine with you and it isn't anybody else's business. How dare anybody try to tell you not to vote for war, not to vote for fascism, not to vote?

Well, I'm telling you. Again. I don't care if the coming economic collapse makes the Great Depression look like Disneyland. I don't care if the government nukes a few U.S. cities and blames it on Iran. I'm telling you to stop being complicit and to stop collaborating. There will be another election and another election. Even in Zimbabwe where conditions are indescribably brutal, there are elections. That's the only way that governments can demonstrate the consent of the governed, whether they get it legitimately or not.

The only proven successful way to delegitimize a government is to boycott its elections. It worked to discredit the Apartheid regime in South Africa. It worked to discredit the Batista regime in Cuba. If you don't vote, the government cannot demonstrate your consent. That's the only reason fascist dictatorships hold elections.

So I'm starting now for 2012. Don't vote. It doesn't matter who the candidates are or what they promise. They are candidates because they believe in the system. Do you believe in the system? Not if you're a truther. You know that the system was reponsible for both 9/11 and the cover-up.

Stop consenting. Stop collaborating. Stop voting.

Truth from Emma Goldman: If elections could change anything, they'd be illegal.

Truth from George Carlin: If you vote, you can't complain.

Truth from me, Mark Smith: If you voted, the blood is on your hands. The next 9/11 is on your hands. I didn't vote for it. You did.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Federal law enforcement has increasingly used a key provision of the Patriot Act
(pdf) to pry into people’s lives without having to tell them. This
practice has been justified under the guise of counterterrorism, but
government statistics show that less than 1% of all “sneak and peek”
actions involve suspected terrorists.

Under section 213 of the Patriot Act, law enforcement agencies can
carry out sneak-and-peek warrants, which allow agents to “secretly
enter, either physically or virtually; conduct a search, observe, take
measurements, conduct examinations, smell, take pictures, copy
documents, download or transmit computer files, and the like; and depart
without taking any tangible evidence or leaving notice of their
presence.” Suspects can be informed of the search later.

The provision was added to the Patriot Act because, the FBI claimed, it was important not to tip off terrorism suspects during cases.

“The numbers vindicate privacy advocates who urged Congress to shelve
Section 213 during the Patriot Act debates,” Mark Jaycox at EFF wrote.
“Proponents of Section 213 claimed sneak and peek warrants were needed
to protect against terrorism. But just like we’ve seen elsewhere, these
claims are false.”

The U.S. Air Force says it is not halting its use of Depleted Uranium weapons, has recently sent them to the Middle East, and is prepared to use them.

A type of airplane, the A-10, deployed this month to the Middle East
by the U.S. Air National Guard's 122nd Fighter Wing, is responsible for
more Depleted Uranium (DU) contamination than
any other platform, according to the International Coalition to Ban
Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). "Weight for weight and by number of rounds
more 30mm PGU-14B ammo has been used than any other round," said ICBUW
coordinator Doug Weir, referring to ammunition used by A-10s, as
compared to DU ammunition used by tanks.

Public affairs superintendent Master Sgt. Darin L. Hubble of the
122nd Fighter Wing told me that the A-10s now in the Middle East along
with "300 of our finest airmen" have been sent there on a deployment
planned for the past two years and have not been assigned to take part
in the current fighting in Iraq or Syria, but "that could change at any
moment."

The crews will load PGU-14 depleted uranium
rounds into their 30mm Gatling cannons and use them as needed, said
Hubble. "If the need is to explode something -- for example a tank --
they will be used."

Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright told me, "There is no prohibition against the use of Depleted
Uranium rounds, and the [U.S. military] does make use of them. The use
of DU in armor-piercing munitions allows enemy tanks to be more easily
destroyed."

On Thursday, several nations, including Iraq, spoke to the United Nations First Committee, against the use of Depleted Uranium and in support of studying and mitigating the damage in already contaminated areas. A non-binding resolution
is expected to be voted on by the Committee this week, urging nations
that have used DU to provide information on locations targeted. A
number of
organizations are delivering a petition to U.S. officials this week urging them not to oppose the resolution.

In 2012 a resolution on DU was supported by 155 nations and opposed
by just the UK, U.S., France, and Israel. Several nations have banned
DU, and in June Iraq proposed a global treaty banning it -- a step also
supported by the European and Latin American Parliaments.

Wright said that the U.S. military is "addressing concerns on the use
of DU by investigating other types of materials for possible use in
munitions, but with some mixed results. Tungsten has some limitations in
its functionality in armor-piercing munitions, as well as some health
concerns based on the results of animal research on some
tungsten-containing alloys. Research is continuing in this area to find
an alternative to DU that is more readily accepted by the public, and
also performs satisfactorily in munitions."

"I fear DU is this generation's Agent Orange," U.S. Congressman Jim
McDermott told me. "There has been a sizable increase in childhood
leukemia and birth defects in Iraq since the Gulf War and our subsequent
invasion in 2003. DU munitions were used in both those conflicts.
There are also grave suggestions that DU weapons have caused serious
health issues for our Iraq War veterans. I seriously question the use
of these weapons until the U.S. military conducts a full investigation
into the effect of DU weapon residue on human beings."

Doug Weir of ICBUW said renewed use of DU in Iraq would be "a
propaganda coup for ISIS." His and other organizations opposed to DU are
guardedly watching a possible U.S. shift away from DU, which the U.S.
military said it did not use in Libya in 2011. Master Sgt. Hubble of
the 122nd Fighter Wing believes that was simply a tactical decision.
But public pressure had been brought to bear by activists and allied
nations' parliaments, and by a UK commitment not to use DU.

DU is classed as a Group 1 Carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and evidence
of health damage produced by its use is extensive. The damage is
compounded, Jeena Shah at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
told me, when the nation that uses DU refuses to identify locations
targeted. Contamination enters soil and water. Contaminated scrap metal
is used in factories or made into cooking pots or played with by
children.

CCR and Iraq Veterans Against the War have filed a Freedom of Information Act Request
in an attempt to learn the locations targeted in Iraq during and after
the 1991 and 2003 assaults. The UK and the Netherlands have revealed
targeted locations, Shah pointed out, as did NATO following DU use in
the Balkans. And the United States has revealed locations it targeted
with cluster munitions. So why not now?

"For years," Shah said, "the U.S. has denied a relationship between
DU and health problems in civilians and veterans. Studies of UK veterans
are highly suggestive of a connection. The U.S. doesn't want studies
done." In addition, the United States has used DU in civilian areas and identifying those locations could suggest violations of Geneva Conventions.

This email may be unlawfully collected, held, and read by the NSA
which violates our freedoms using the justification of immoral, illegal
wars absurdly described as being somehow for freedom.
Sign up for these emails at http://davidswanson.org/signup.

This year it looks as if remembrance day on November 9 will be
more of a gala to celebrate militarism than a serious attempt to
honour the dead and take stock of the damage done by WW1. As
Lindsey German outlines, the red poppy has become
appropriated by an establishment keen to create the atmosphere in
which it can pursue current wars more freely.

On Saturday Stop the War co-hosted with No Glory an excellent One
Hundred Years of War conference which aimed to be a counterblast
to attempts to rehabilitate WW1 as a necessary war. Videos of key
sessions will be on the website soon.

In the meantime we are asking all our supporters to do everything
possible to promote the anti-war message in the run up to
Remembrance Day.

Songwriter Robb Johnson performs his acclaimed song cycle Gentle
Men, telling the stories of Robb's grandfathers Ernest Johnson and
Harry Jenner - who survived the First World War but were forever
in its shadow.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

The
ReThink911 International Petition is open to all citizens worldwide.
When this petition reaches one million signatories, it will be delivered
to the Head of State of every nation that had citizens who died in the
attacks on September 11, 2001.

Economics Professor Paul Zarembka, has written in the past
that the work of Mike Williams at the debunking site 911myths.com had
caused him "to reconsider [his] prior conclusion of high probability of
insider trading in put options" for American and United airlines stocks.
I have previously stated that I believe the insider trading issue had been effectively debunked.

by Paul Zarembka
Department of Economics
State University of New York at Buffalo
September 9, 2011

Excerpts:

Evidence
of Insider Trading before September 11th Re-examined - See more at:
http://ithp.org/articles/septemberinsidertrading.html#sthash.pnCc5e74.dpuf

Two Caveats

Let me put one consideration to rest. Some critics of the 9/11 truth movement, such as Kay (2011), claim that the entire movement is filled with people who go down a rabbit hole, never willing to leave it. In this case, the suggested claim could be that Sarnoff himself should be added to a conspiracy about 9/11, added as soon as the government released in January 2009 its evidence as to who made what recommendation and with what effect regarding American on September 10. Such an approach would address the contradiction we have identified. But it would be at the expense of having no evidence for such an assertion.

We wish to stay with evidence, evidence from the econometricians, the government, and anywhere else obtainable. In other words, we wish to push into the contradiction.
'''
Regarding evidence we have to be careful. For Boeing, Mike Williams, seeking to expose myths among skeptics of the official story of September 11th,, cites a Dutch article of September 11, 2006 placed on the site physics911.net (www.911myths.com/index.php/Put_Options#Boeing, accessed August 4, 2011). This article had made only a tangential mention to this airline manufacturer, thus representing no more the proverbial “straw man” – a data source is not even provided. Williams then provides a news report referring to one analyst’s public downgrading of Boeing on September 7th, apparently being unaware that put-options purchases cited by Poteshman were on United occurred on September 6th (as well as in Chesney as we shall see below).4

Among known skeptics of the official 9/11 story, discussion of option transactions at a site hosted by Jim Hoffman (http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/stockputs.html, accessed August 4, 2011) is embarrassingly out of date, mostly refers to 2001 stories, even though claiming an August 2007 update. Kevin Ryan (2010), followed by Mark Gaffney (2011) whose book Black 9/11 is due for release shortly, each attempt a recent survey, but seem unaware of the Commission documentation on insider trading released in January 2009...

4 Within the same discussion, Williams cites many reports of put-option volumes without those using accurate data. Some reported data are about double the actual levels, presumably due to author errors in understanding Optionmetric data which considers the buy and sell sides of one transaction to be distinct. If one is going to criticize, focusing upon those arguing for insider trading using correct data to make their cases seems preferable.

“The main motivation for considering increments in open interests is the following. Large volumes do not necessarily imply that large buy orders are executed because the same put option could be traded several times during the day. In contrast large increments in open interest are originated by large buy orders. These increments also imply that other long investors are unwilling to close their positions forcing the market maker to issue new put options.” (Chesney, et al., pp. 8-9)

In order to abstract from intraday speculation, they compare daily changes in open interest to the reported volumes of transactions (the difference between the two should be small). In other words, purchases are to dominant, with sales or exercises of options small.

This calculation could seem to suggest 103 times in eight and one-quarter years beginning in January 1998. But a stock like AMR stock price fell considerably from April 2002 to a low of $1.25 within one year thereafter implying much higher volumes then required for similar dollar option positions.

Actually, AMR closed at $17.90 on both September 21 and 27 before the October 20 option expiration; the $18.00 on September 17 was not quite the lowest. However, presumably the option price was the highest on September 17.

Let Gt be the cumulative gains achieved through the exercises of the selected option in the shortest time available from the day of the calculated maximum up to ten trading days thereafter. Chesney’s third criterion is then offered as a pair of conditions for the option trade in question, that is,

At least three eyewitnesses spotted
al Qaeda hijackers casing the security checkpoints at Boston’s Logan
Airport months before the 9/11 attacks. They saw something and said
something — but were ignored, newly unveiled court papers reveal.

One
of the witnesses, an American Airlines official, actually confronted
hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta after watching him videotape and test a
security checkpoint in May 2001 — four months before he boarded the
American Airlines flight that crashed into the World Trade Center.

The witness alerted security, but authorities never questioned the belligerent Egyptian national or flagged him as a threat.

“I’m
convinced that had action been taken after the sighting of Atta, the
9/11 attacks, at least at Logan, could have been deterred,” said Brian
Sullivan, a former FAA special agent who at the time warned of holes in
security at the airport.

The three Boston witnesses were never
publicly revealed, even though they were interviewed by the FBI and
found to be credible. Their names didn’t even appear as footnotes in the
9/11 Commission Report.

But what they testified to seeing — only
revealed now as part of the discovery in a settled 9/11 wrongful-death
suit against the airlines and the government — can only be described as
chilling.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Readers of Debunking the Debunkers should consider sending the occassional letter to their public broadcasters, in this case ABC News (Australia) online, in order to provide pressure to get them to 'tell the truth'. Public pressure forced CSPAN to interview Richard Gage from Architechs and Engineers for 911 Truth. The following letter attempts to undermine a war facilitating webpage. Even if your letter is short, it will help. Someone will read the content, and perhaps change their mind.

LETTER:

Hello [XXXXXXX],

I just went through your article titled "Explained: What Makes the Middle East a Witch's Brew" and noted a number of very significant omissions to the narrative such that it effectively misleads your audience when it comes to helping them "understand what is happening in Iraq and Syria."

The biggest overarching omission is that you neglected to explain that the conflict in Syria, that has helped fuel the fighting in Iraq, is essentially a PROXY WAR that was instigated by the US, UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other allies, where planning was conducted a number of years before hostilities erupted.

The problem is not ISIS. The problem is the proxy war in Syria and the geopolitical desire by the west to remove Iranian-Shia influence in Iraq. This is not to say that your analysis of the Maliki Government's pro-Shiite bias is incorrect, only that the opposition movements benefited immensely from this US-Saudi policy to the point where these countries backed extremists and escalated the fighting to serve their own agendas. The focus on fighting Assad in Syria over the last 3 years is the root cause of the ISIS ascension.

Interviews with people, such as refugees including nuns, indicated that the protests were indeed hijacked and that people fled the country because of the 'rebels', who acted barbarically from the beginning:

Other reports of arms flowing across the Turkish border in trucks and weapons coming in from Qatar and Saudi Arabia can be found by those that look.

In your section "The Assad Problem" you mentioned sniper attacks on children without presenting any evidence of this claim. The reason evidence is important here is because we have had claims of chemical weapons use by the Syrian Government where the evidence (Carla Del Ponte's UN team, MIT scientists) indicated that the rebels were responsible for its use - the opposite of the claims made by western countries (USA, UK) involved in the proxy attack on Syria.

We do have footage of snipers shooting on civilians in Syria but they are unidentified individuals and are likely provocateurs. We cannot tell for sure. In an interview with former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, we find that he was approached by British officials in 2009, two years before violence broke out in Syria, to assist in efforts to oust/destabilise Assad:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz-s2AAh06I

This is not to say that the forces of the Assad Government have acted by the conventions of a legally conducted war - obviously they have not, if we are to go by Robert Fisk's reports of the Syrian Army not taking prisoners at various stages of the conflict. However, the Assad Government is reacting to an armed uprising fully supported by a western military alliance. Herein lies the great crime, and the issue that you have neglected to cover.

I highly recommend watching the following videos that contain strong first hand evidence of foreign intervention in the conflict including the staging of the chemical weapons attacks that were wrongly (deliberately) blamed on the Syrian Government.

At present your article is misleading your audience through the omission of vitally important evidence. In the interests of balance you need to make corrections (under the ABC Code of Practise guidelines).

This is the problem with the mainstream media at present - it is facilitating murder by uncritically reporting on these events and neglecting to remind viewers of deliberate western involvement in these types of wars - where they initiate the fighting and then escalate the situation.

Please make the necessary corrections.
_______________________________

Friday, October 24, 2014

The water situation for
the 1.7 million Palestinian residents of Gaza was dire before this
summer's war. Today, it's catastrophic.

Due to electricity
shortages and damage to Gaza infrastructure, untreated sewage is
flooding Gaza streets and running into the sea, creating public health
risk for Gazans and Israelis alike.

Gazans desperately need
access to clean water, and there is an easy solution. One of three water
pipelines that run from Israel into Gaza has never been turned on.
Israel could literally double the flow of potable water to Gaza
today--it's as easy as turning on the faucet.

No
Glory this autumn – white poppies | conference | concert |
debate

No Glory has a busy Autumn ahead, with a wide range of events,
including an important conference this Saturday, an acclaimed
concert and a mouth-watering debate. The highlights are:

1) Conference: 1914-2014 - One Hundred
Years of War

This Saturday 25 October, No Glory in conjuction with Stop the War
Coalition, is organising an important conference in London, titled 1914-2014:
One Hundred Years of War.

The conference brings together an impressive lineup of speakers,
including Adam Hochschildfrom the USA, author of
the classic book on the First World War, To End All Wars; Boris
Kagarlitsky Russian writer and campaigner; Guardian
journalist Seumas Milne; renowned playwright David
Edgar, cultural historian Priyamvada Gopal; Lindsey
German from Stop the War Coalition; historian Neil
Faulkner, author of the best-selling pamphlet, The Real
History of World War One; and Explo Nani Kofi from
Ghana.

Each year more and more people choose to wear the white poppy -
as a respectful way to put peace at the heart of remembering those
who died in war. This year, 100 years on from 1914, is a fitting
time to spread the white poppy as widely as possible. Here’s what
you can do:

Wear a white poppy yourself. It will probably
trigger conversations with colleagues and strangers - a powerful
way to get the message out there. Some may choose to wear both
red and white poppies.

Buy white poppies to share with others.

Spread the word. Tell others how to find out
more and buy white poppies for themselves.

Send us a Selfie of yourself with your white
poppy for a gallery on the No Glory website. Send to info@noglory.org.

3) Performance of Robb Johnson's acclaimed Gentle Men

If you’ve ever seen Robb Johnson in concert, you’ll know what a
great performer he is. Politics with passion and fun – and
fabulous music. Robb has kindly agreed to perform his acclaimed
WW1 song cycle Gentle Men as a fund raiser for No Glory.

A wonderful mixture of the political and personal - Billy
BraggA folk classic - The GuardianIn all the artistic commemoration of the First World War, I
wager nothing will show more humanity or understanding than
Gentle Men - BBC

4) Debate: Should Britain have joined the First World War?

On the afternoon of Saturday 6th December No Glory in conjunction
with the Imperial War Museum is organising a debate between
historians Hew Strachan and Neil Faulkner. They will debate Should
Britain have joined the First World War? It will be a
fascinating clash. Tickets and more details will be available soon
- but do put the date in your diary now.

5) Events Calendar

We are continually updating our calendar for World War One events
of all descriptions, whether organised by No Glory and by many
other organisations around the country. Please send us information
about any WW1 events you are planning.
See the calendar for details of events in your area...

6) Keeping informed on the issues around the WW1 centenary

The No Glory website is widely recognised for its range of
articles and resources that take a view opposing the glorification
of World War One. We update the website regularly. Recent
additions include:

You can also keep up-to-date with No Glory by following us on Twitter or Facebook.

7) Donate

No Glory depends entirely on donations to fund all of its
activities, events and on-line resources. Do consider supporting
us. You
can make a donation here...

Adam Hochschild and the truth about
World War One

As we approach Remembrance Day Stop the
War is co-hosting along with the No Glory in War campaign a
day conference on World War One and the hundred years of war that
has followed.

Acclaimed US based author Adam Hochschild will be presenting his
audiovisual account of World War One, based on his best selling
book 'To End All Wars'. Adam is an award winning author of a
string of books including 'King Leopold's Ghost and' 'Bury the
Chains'.

One Hundred Years of War25 October 12pm - 5pm
Bishopsgate Institute, London

3.45pm - 5pm:Closing: opposing war one hundred years on
Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Kagarlitsky, Lindsey German

Our speakers: Adam Hochschild author and historian,
Cultural historian Priyamvada Gopal, writer and journalist
Seumas Milne, historian Neil Faulkner author of The
real history of World War One, Lindsey German
author of Women and War and convenor of Stop the War
Coalition, Matthew Burnett-StuartCampaign Against
Arms Trade Jeremy Corbyn MP, playwright David Edgar, disability
history month organiser Richard Rieser.

The conference will take place at the Bishopsgate Institute on
Bisghopsgate near Liverpool Street Station, London.

You can book your ticket online with Eventbrite
or by calling the box office on 020 7561 4830.Friends of Stop the War are entitled to one free ticket and
Student can get in for £8.

Each year more and more people choose
to wear the white poppy - as a respectful way to put peace at the
heart of remembering those who died in war. This year, 100 years
on from 1914, is a fitting time to spread the white poppy as
widely as possible. Here’s what you can do:

Wear a white poppy yourself. It will probably trigger
conversations with colleagues and strangers - a powerful way
to get the message out there. Some may choose to wear both red
and white poppies

Buy white poppies to share with others

Spread the word. Tell others how to find out more and buy
white poppies for themselves.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

We, the undersigned, urge the United States government to address the toxic legacy of its depleted uranium use in Iraq.

On November 5, a new resolution on depleted uranium weaponry will be
introduced to the United Nations General Assembly. While the text of
this year's resolution is still being negotiated, since 2007, UN
resolutions have included language affirming the need for research on
the potential harmful effects of depleted uranium as well as the need
for disclosure of where this weaponry has been used. The resolutions
have been passed by the vast majority of the world's nations, indicating
a growing global concern. Unfortunately, each year the U.S. has
isolated itself by opposing these resolutions, alongside only a few
other countries.

The U.S. must end its opposition to UN action on depleted uranium.
It must also support clean-up of areas where it has used depleted
uranium and further scientific study of the impact of these materials on
people, such as the relationship of these materials to increased cancer
rates and birth defects, so that proper treatment can be pursued for
those who have been exposed. These actions are critical to both civilian
communities in Iraq and U.S. veterans and servicemembers.

We note the renewed urgency of this matter given the current U.S. military actions in Iraq and Syria.